


Skin Deep

by Barb Cummings (Rahirah)



Series: The Barbverse [13]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-20
Updated: 2009-11-20
Packaged: 2017-10-03 11:26:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rahirah/pseuds/Barb%20Cummings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe she notices his changes because he isn't supposed to change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skin Deep

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set in the same universe as _A Raising in the Sun_, _Necessary Evils_, et. al. (See the [Barbverse Timeline](http://sleepingjaguars.com/buffy/viewpage.php?page=timeline) for specifics.) It contains spoilers for previous works in the series.

Maybe she notices his changes because he isn't supposed to change. Vampires are eternal, right? Her vampire has to bleach his hair every two weeks or the dark roots will show. She's seen old Council photos of him with Brilliantined curls and a Clark Gable moustache. She's seen him grow lean and knife-edged in the years after the chip went in, and fill out again once comfortably domesticated. The whole concept of a vampire working out is just weird, but she's pretty certain William didn't have biceps like that when he was turned in 1880.

Vampire healing forgives, but it doesn't entirely forget. His body's an archeological dig of scars, old and new. She counts them sometimes, when he sleeps: The faint white-on-white spiderweb on his chest, radiating out from the place where Willow burnt him to the bone with spellfire. The knot in his left thigh, where the leg he'd broken falling off Glory's tower had healed crooked and had to be re-broken and splinted when Dawn had marched down into his crypt and slapped him out of his drunken, half-starved stupor three weeks later. The fading score-marks across the small of his back, where she'd brought a burning roof-beam down across his spine. The semi-circular gash on his calf where he'd sliced it open falling through the ice when he was twelve.

Mayor Wilkins tried to scare her once, pointing out that vampires never grew old. She hadn't been able to snap out a quippy comeback then, but later (two years later, in the shower; stuff like that always came to you in the shower when it was way too late to do anything about it) she realized that he was wrong. She's seen vampires touched by age--the Master, Kaikistos. She strokes the lightning-bolt trisecting his left eyebrow, legacy of another Slayer, long ago. Her fingers trace the dark ironic arch of brow and the perfect, breathtaking sweep of cheekbone, and she hopes that Spike lives long enough to get ugly.

END


End file.
